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Ritual Dancers, Tsurphu Monastery, Lhasa, Tibet, 2000

Tibetans believe both the negative and positive things done during Losar, the Tibetan New Year celebration, reverberate through the year to come. Here, Buddhist monks from the Tsurphu Monastery near Lhasa chase away bad spirits with a dance honoring the dharmapala divinity.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Tibet Embraces the New Year," January 2000, National Geographic magazine)

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Photograph by Maria Stenzel